Firm That Hired 286 of 800,000 Applicants Eliminates Recruiting as 'Last Human Bottleneck'

MILAN—Italian software company Bending Spoons announced Tuesday that it would dissolve its human resources and recruiting division, describing the team as "the final meaningful source of operational drag" after the company's AI systems wrote 90 percent of all code in the first quarter of 2026.

The company, which owns Vimeo, Evernote, and AOL, received approximately 800,000 job applications in 2025, processed them using AI screening tools supplemented by human review, and ultimately hired 286 people—a process Chief Executive Luca Ferrari described in an internal memo as "the only workflow in the organization that still requires humans to look at things."

"We kept 620 employees and generated $2.57 million in revenue per person," Ferrari wrote. "The bottleneck is clear."

Under the revised model, Bending Spoons will accept no unsolicited applications. The company's remaining open positions, listed in internal documents as "regulatory placeholders," will be filled through an invitation-only process conducted entirely by the firm's AI infrastructure, which will source, screen, interview, and extend offers to candidates with no human involvement at any stage.

Ferrari said the change would allow the remaining workforce to focus on tasks "not yet delegable," which an attached slide deck listed as "attending board meetings" and "signing documents that require a wet signature in front of a notary."

The company's IPO prospectus describes its workforce strategy as "post-scarcity hiring" and lists "near-zero marginal cost of additional headcount" as a key competitive advantage.

"We remain a people company," Ferrari told staff. "We simply need very few of them."